Fair enough. My problem with his post was the tone; yours is pretty much the opposite--it's thoughtful and well-meant. And I can definitely understand a desire for more dynamic graphics, even if I don't personally feel it necessary. This will show my ignorance but is a 45 fps a possibility? The toggle for 30 and 60 is a great idea otherwise.
dev already said hes going to look into having artists work on the game. i appreciate the simplicity tho. lets see, what can i voice an opinion about today? ooooh. i would like a separate mode where im fighting someone like puzzle quest, only with this games mode of play.
i think adding some simple animations might be kind of fun. a short animation for beating a boss, for instance. or perhaps some kind of 'entering a new room' animation for clearing enough tiles at once. but, at the same time, i could see that disrupting the flow of the puzzle to a lot of people. at the very least, they should be optional. i'd certainly get a kick out of accentuating the adventure/rpg setting, though.
Hmm, I wonder how that would work? Two players share a grid with all good things happening to you but the damage from monsters on the screen going to the opponent? Cute but, enh, again not seeing an easy way to make that work within the current mechanics.
Multiplayer would be pretty easy. There are a few options: (1) You share the same board. Instead of skulls, red and blue player "troops" drop. You damage the other player by matching swords to the appropriate troops. Players get to pick one initial skill, and an additional skill every level up. Level ups would be more frequent, the matchs should be short. Say level up every 25 kills. Matching your own troops to potions heals them, not you, but you can still just match potions to heal you. New skills could easily be added, such as heal your troops, damage opponent, life drain opponent, life drain opponent's skulls, or my favorite idea, "manifest" in which you, the general, manifest on the battlefield and do damage every turn for x turns or until killed . . . but in so doing, also expose yourself to direct attack, and if your killed before the skill expires, the match is over. Players take turns, and have a turn timer. If you get an upgrade, you get an additional 20 seconds to pick it. Note that this variation has an extra type of item on the board (two types of troops), but since you can chose to match your own troops to potions, it wont necessarily be all that much harder to clear stuff. If its a problem, gold could potentially be removed in this mode; (2) You each have a different board, but otherwise it works just as above, except there is only your opponents troops. Thus, this variation will have the same number of things to match. There are probably lots of other ways to work it as well.
Anybody listen to the podcast AppSlappy (a cool podcast about the latest and greatest in the AppStore by Scott Johnson, the man behind the Extra Life webcomic)? Dungeon Raid has now been praised/reviewed in 3 episodes in a row (#75-77)! 2x by Cheap Dad (an extra little bit they slap on the end of the episode and, accidentally or intentionally ran the same review two episodes in a row). Then in episode #77, the main dude, Scott Johnson himself, did a quick review for it. In all 3 (2) reviews they were extremely positive with only a slight whine that the graphics are pretty bare bone.
For me, the appeal of the game is that it does feel like a limited-life RPG, aka a Rogue-like. I usually hit my stride in the 20k score range when I start power leveling every 2nd or 3rd turn. To me, that's when the game really shines. Being too short will take that away for me and relegate much of the action to the slower build up, which is still fun due to the mechanic but not as compelling due to lack of leveling and growth.
Personally, I think the game is fine as is. It is extremely addictive and one of my top 5 favorite apps. As much as I would like to see better graphics, animations, different creatures and rooms, I would rather see all this put into a sequel. The beauty of this game is its simplicity. Easy to understand and enough variety to keep it interesting. I look it at like Puzzle Quest and Puzzle Quest 2. I love both versions and would rather have two completely different games than to just have one version that would be a combination of the two. Keep Dungeon Raid as is with minor tweaks and put the effort into a Dungeon Raid 2. That way we will always have the great game that is there now and we can have a sequel that works to improve on the original. I know there are enough people like me that would have no problem buying and playing both.
Hey FF - How about making Spikes scaleable? What if 1 point of spikes did Def/Def (always 1). But each additional point of spike did Def*(spike_points*.2(*Def))/Def So with this formula, if you had 8 points of def and 3 points of spikes, you would actually do 4.8 damage. Get your defense up to 10 shields and add a 4th point of spike and you jump to 8 spike damage. Seems like a nice boost for committing additional 2 def and 1 spike point.
I don't know, I kind of like spikes being powerful early game and then gradually losing relevance, so you can either go for early advantage with spikes or try to ration your upgrades into something more lasting. I can see your way would make armor more useful, though, so there may be something there, hmm
Yeah, I just wish there were viable defensive shield builds that worked on harder also. I don't think you intended that shields would only be for upgrades when you first designed the game. I want incentive to build up lots of defense, and hide behind spikes and regen. Another thought about poison....it should temporarily weaken the damage a skull does while it is poisoned. So if poison lasts three turns, in addition to the damage, it also cuts the damage that skull does in half for those turns. But as soon as the poison wears off, it is back to full strength.
I agree with the overall sentiment that it would be nice to have focusing on defense be a viable strategy for later in the game on Hard and Harder. Maybe the way to make spikes scale would be to change their effect such that the damage they do is a percentage of the attacking skulls' health, and upgrading spikes would increase that percentage? Or, perhaps a percentage of the damage that the attacking skulls have done to the player? That way, the more skulls that are attacking at once, the more damage they'll take, creating an advantage for leaving skulls on the board for a bit, rather than killing them all as quickly as possible. The problem that I have with certain skills only being useful during the beginning of the game is that once I figure that out, I end up not taking them again in future games. The beginning isn't where I have problems - it's much later in the game that I run into difficulties. Getting ahead early on is nice, but there are other ways of doing it that will still be useful in the late-game, too.
I like the changes in the recent update. Game is way less of a battery hog, and the slightly reduced framerate is hardly noticable. Item selection is better too. Looking forward to future updates
Agreed. The 30fps isn't nearly as bad as someone made it out to be in this thread. I can hardly notice the difference. I guess making it optional is nice, but I'm glad I upgraded since I have a 10 hour flight back to Seattle from Tokyo coming up.
The perfect skill setup: Using the "potion>mana" skill and the "instant upgrade" and "collect all shields" to get quicker upgrades, and "potion>xp" for faster level ups. Awww yeah.
